Priding itself on presenting a thorough overview of the most interesting new typefaces on the market, the annual specialises in covering typographic diversity and the global spread of independent font makers.Now in its eighth year it is not positioned as a competition with a panel of judges. Instead it is made up of reviews from a collection of respected industry professionals who discuss their favourite typeface releases from the last year.

FF Quixo was enthusiastically reviewed by Rob Saunders, a designer, teacher, publisher, and consultant who runs the Letterform Archive.The brainchild of Frank Grießhammer’s FF Quixo was a result of a graduation project at the Type and Media program at KABK Den Haag. Exploring pointed-pen calligraphy, he decided to take on the style in a more casual manner, interpreting the model with different-sized brushes to create the typeface.

Reviewed by Tim Brown, Type Manager for Typekit, owner of Nice Web Type and author of Five Simple Steps: Combining Typefaces, FF Dora is described as a serif from a certain contemporary style of serif, which include likeminded predecessors such as Fedra, Dolly, and Elena.Designed by editorial and book designer Slávka Pauliková, it is a strong-willed type family consisting of five styles: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, and Display. The distinctive personality of the typeface comes from the main focus of the designer to transform handwritten shapes into a serif text typeface, not a script face.

Originally drawn as a graduation project, FF Dora was designed by editorial and book designer Slávka Pauliková. It is a strong-willed type family consisting of five styles: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic and Display. Based on a detailed study of today’s handwriting styles it focuses on transforming handwritten shapes into a serif text typeface.

As a major competition with around 1800 entrants, inclusion is one of the most-coveted awards in the typographic industry. Receiving recognition for one of our fonts in the 2014 Annual is a great way to start the year!

‘You can make a beautiful book using only one style and one size of the typeface.’

Slávka Pauliková’s headstrong FF Dora is the newest addition to our library — A type family consisting of five styles; as the weights expand, the contrast increases but still retains the characteristic handwritten personality of pen-flicked strokes and culminates in its most playful face, FF Dora Display.

We spoke to Slávka about the making of FF Dora, where the name comes from and how her experience in book design has contributed to her type design.

The process behind FF Dora started out as a study of today’s handwriting styles and transforming them into a serif text typeface. For some the easier (or perhaps more obvious) option would have been to turn the handwriting styles into a script face. What was it that made you decide to explore the serif text form?

I had the idea in my mind for a long time, even before my studies at Type and Media began. I dedicated several self-initiated book projects to the topic of today’s handwriting and was fascinated by how everyone develops their own handwriting and how it differs from the form we were taught at school as kids. The results I came up with through my research were pretty interesting. Some handwritten letterforms completely change their forms from the handwriting of a grown-up person. People formulate their own visual language which is sometimes not readable to anyone else but themselves.

The 15th century typefaces are based on calligraphy and handwriting. There is a fascinating translation of the fluid calligraphic letterforms into a serif typeface which had to be designed because of the letterpress technique. My initial idea when I started designing Dora, was to explore the boundaries between the transition of a handwritten letterform into a serif typeface. After many trials and tests of combining handwritten letters with serif letters, I decided to minimize this relationship to increase the balance of the typeface. However, I think my starting point is still visible in letters such as the italic ‘k’.

The name Dora is derived from the nickname in Slovakian for a headstrong girl. Was there a particular girl or woman you had in mind when designing FF Dora?

Naming the typeface took me really long time and I actually named it at the very end of the design process, right before my graduation. I picked the name because it was short and clear and it suited the character of the typeface. I also find it fitting because I was quite determined to finish it the way I wanted it. Since I named the typeface after drawing it, there was no person I was particularly thinking of while designing.

FF Dora suits small sizes but its qualities and styles, especially the display style brings a certain playfulness to the larger text. Where would you love to see FF Dora being used?

I would love to see FF Dora being used in any kind of printed or web material. FF Dora is suitable for longer amounts of text, editorial design, non-fiction books, any selective types of reading … I designed the type specimens for FF Dora very simply without any graphic styles or colour suggestions. I am really curious as to how people will use it.

What has the experience of book design taught you and how has it fed into your own type design?

Editorial and book design taught me that the use of small type families is generally sufficient to achieve well-designed books. You can make a beautiful book using only one style and one size of the typeface. Except newspaper design, book and editorial design allow a typography in which small type families can play an important role. I am working with content-heavy books that need to have different levels of information emphasized typographically. Even a couple of styles or combining two different typefaces is plenty to distinguish different levels of importance in such books. I think this also explains why FF Dora is a small type family.

Introducing FF Dora, a brand new design from one of the youngest and the newest FontFont designers to join the library, FF Signa Slab a delightful edition to the comprehensively developed FF Signa Superfamily and FF Scala Jewel Pro, the language extension of the decorative version to the bestselling FF Scala – this is FF 62, our newest release.

New Designs

FF Dora was originally drawn as a graduation project at the Type and Media masters course at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, and was designed by editorial and book designer Slávka Pauliková. It is a headstrong type family consisting of five styles: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, and Display. FF Dora’s construction principles – especially in the italic and display styles – are based on a detailed study of today’s handwriting styles. The main focus was on transforming handwritten shapes into a serif text typeface, not a script face. Much of the distinctive personality of the typeface is derived from this idea. FF Dora is perfectly suited to editorial design, particularly for book and magazine typography. Primarily, it is intended to be used in small sizes but FF Dora’s qualities and styles, especially the display style, bring a certain playfulness to larger sized text.

FF Signa Slab is the newest addition to the comprehensively developed FF Signa Superfamily designed by Ole Søndergaard. With square curves, high shoulders and a characteristically sparse construction, FF Signa Slab comes in seven weights, each with companion italics. The face includes all the necessities needed for professional typesetting such as small caps and the Pro version includes support for Cyrillic-based languages.